Thursday, 24 September 2009

I am a proud unionist. Being British that obvious means I believe in the Union as embodied by the United Kingdom. But it means more than that. I passionately believe in ever closer ties between all the nations of the world and thus I've always had a soft spot for the United Nations (despite it's many faults). But of late, I feel like the United Nations has been hijacked.

Nothing makes me feel more affection for the United Nations than speeches such as that of Eleanor Roosevelt at the declaration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see here for audio and text).

Aspirations to peace and freedom are obviously always going to be merely aspirations... we are humans after all. But it's nice to aim high. Sadly the United Nations has started to be taken over by the illiberal and the backward. First it adopted an article that clearly threatens freedom of speech with regards to defamation of religion. Now the President of the United Nations General Assembly supports the criminilisation of homosexuality and finds homosexuality "unacceptable". It's time the free people of the world (i.e. those not in backward, regressive places like Libya) stood up and said "Not in our name!".

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